Which is probably why the explanation for their behavior is not included in the tutorial or game manual. The obvious take-away is "stay away from monsters", but what's not obvious is that you can't and still hope to win on the higher difficulties. I would suggest that the tutorial make it clearer that disturbing monsters is a gamble you'll find that you have to take.
When you see a swarm of monsters wandering around the AI's territory, that tells you that they are being suppressed by those monsters. Their expansion will be slower, their troops will be weaker, their champions will have more injuries.
This is a tangential issue, but this really speaks to a weakness of the faction AI. Once they transition from the exploration stage into the inter-faction warfare stage, they seem to lose all interest in monsters. And that really hurts them, because the monsters roaming their territories are killing pioneers, destroying caravans, and wrecking improvements. And their champions are missing out on a lot of easy experience.
this is older in the thread but i have to take issue with this. If this is indeed the #1 basic strategy (which it may be, I'm not saying it's incorrect) then I find this extremely non-intuitive. I had thought the whole concept of this game is taming the land and clearing monsters, not shoo-ing them toward your neighbors. it also seems like a cheap game mechanic to me if this is how it works. I will try this and see if I can live with it (and if it does, thanks for the tip) but I thought the game would work differently from this.
2) Notices of places being burnt down. That 'customer is always right' rant was utterly bloody daft. The problem here is irrespective of the reality, people feel cheated, and people don't keep playing a game they feel is being unfair. In fact, the best designers and developers put a shitload of effort into hiding whatever cheating the game is doing to keep up with the player, because although everyone knows AI usually has to cheat in some way to challenge us, we also hate seeing them visibly not playing by the same rules.
We can deal with the problem of people feeling like the AI is getting too free a ride by everyone in the game getting a notice that a settlement has been killed by the wildlife. We don't need a name, or a location, just shit like, "Rumours reach your realm of a town devastated by denizens of the wild."
yeah, a little more notification would be good.
You're a moron.
See that? That's called having the balls to insult someone instead of being a snide pussy trying to insult someone without getting told off by moderators.
Having dealt with that, the current behaviour of monsters is so poorly defined and illogical that it has little to no real difference with being perceptually random. Monsters are, at the very least, creatures with instincts and needs. If you're a dumbass who plops down a load of free dinner next to a pack of hungry Skaths who can laugh at the pitiful militia defense, then they're going to go have that dinner. Same with dragons. Same with any hungry beasts. This fits your idiot statements on scripted behaviour, but it should be scripted because it makes intuitive sense. When it comes to hungry beasts happy to eat people, like Skaths and bigass spiders, a city which has nothing capable of stopping them is just dinner that can't run away like everything else does. Settling in such an area without clearing it should be utterly retarded, not a game of 'how lucky am I feeling today'.
Distinct motivations for monster AI can be taken further, with more intelligent creatures like a Bone Ogre that isn't up for eating people but does have a sense and understanding of territory and possession, attacking cities when their borders disturb their home (get off my turf), but having little interest directly attacking a city when just wandering around because it's too much effort (instead attacking units and pillaging any undefended outpost or improvement they find for the shinies). Mites, bandits, and Wildings would fall into the same bracket; all these monsters would be capable of attacking a city, but only with a huge overmatch of power that shows that squashing the city is largely effortless for them, and thus in some way profitable without much personal danger. Guardian creatures like elementals that have no mortality or fear of death can suicide themselves at anything at all that is close enough to their spawning lair. Dragons are just assholes who in every piece of writing are stated to hate humans in particular, but likely any irritating biped will do, and should have their own territory within which you get killed if you enter it or they do splat anything that pushes a border into it.
Monsters being as relatively random as they are now is a sack of balls because it makes no intuitive sense, and no gameplay sense. Absolutely no motile creature is 'random'. It's moving around for a specific damn reason, and we should be able to discern in some way what will or will not piss off certain monsters and what they are likely to do about it, because 'settle next to the unstoppable death machine and expect it to wander around in a schizophrenic fugue' is as bloody stupid as your attack on the idea that monsters should make sense.
I'm sorry, who are you?
Well, the point isn't that the monster will leave you alone (it's most likely going to hang around and be annoying and generally give you fits).
The "#1 basic strategy" is to realize that there just aren't enough worthwhile places to build a settlement. You can't afford to ignore that 4/2/2 next to a river and a forest because a monster is there.
To my mind it's a perfect example of a hard choice.
feels like the times i have risked it I was making a choice between not settling or having a city destroyed before it really becomes useful, either way I end up with no city.
"Random" means "I do not have a clue what it's motivations are" -- this simulates the monsters (sometimes) having priorities other than finding dinner.
In my humble opinion the current punishment does not fit the "crime".
My personal belief is that I'd rather change the consequence of losing a city than change the wandering logic. A single wolf can theoretically attack a city, destroy all inhabitants, raze all the buildings, and salt the earth. Makes zero sense. I'd rather each monster/stack had some kind of damage score (maybe based on cummulative attack of the stack) that decided how much population would be eaten and buildings destroyed. The monsters then moved on... hell, it could be for each attack point of the stack one population is eaten/killed.
But maybe that's the problem. In MOM, the monsters would raid, do a bunch of damage, and then disappear from the map. In FE, if we used this mechanic, where would the monsters go? The next turn they could decide to attack the city again and an infinite loop of city tea bagging.
Another option the devs could decide to do is to allow the stack to kill some population, destroy buildings, then occupy the city switching it to the faction of monsters and ruffians, or even wildlands if it's a wildlands stack. Eat the entire population and have the city be 0 growth while under control of the monsters with city defenders turned off - a ghost town... until some faction liberates it thereby getting the city back, turning the growth back on, etc.
I've never been a fan of the instant raze. It's infuriating to lose a city to something stupid. Something like the above would suit my tastes. People hated losing champions permanently - they added negative traits to offset. Negative traits were too bland, they made them more punishing. Why not also have cities get punished with lost population, buildings, or hell, even some kind of negative debuff like "Recently occupied by a purple pony named Xia who ate half the population, suffer -50% growth rate for 50 turns".
I like that the world is dangerous and unpredictable but do not like how cities go poof. One slip, and it's time to rage quit or reload.
Seeing as their actions are based on dice rolls i'm not sure you know what random means.
Futher more it has very little to do with my preferences. It has more to do with the fact that losing a game to random does not = fun to most people and I'm not alone in my aversion to not wanting to spend hours on a game that you can lose because some monster rolled a 10 instead of a 1, and pretending that you can change its actions based on strategy. Dealing with monsters in FE is a game of chance pure and simple. People like to learn from their mistakes.. however with monsters in FE.. it has little to do with mistakes.
Example in his first play through a player plops down a city next to a monster. Monster destroys the city.. so he thinks oh well then I shouldn't place towns there until i kill monster. Next play through he starts building his forces to kill a big baddie blocking some fertile land then over comes some Ai faction plops down a city and the monster wanders over and attacks the players town. So now he has learned that placing a city there will cost him, and not placing a city there will cost him, and thinks the monsters have a preference for attacking the player. Now we both know that what the monster did was based on random dice rolls, but that certainly doesn't make the player feel any less cheated. Nor does it solve it self through more play throughs since either choice could have ended good or bad for the player. Basically you take your chances with monsters and hope you don't roll a bad number.
To take it further.. a third play through he plops a city next to a monster again.. monster wanders off outside his view.. kills some Ai armies and an outpost.. then wanders back into view and destroys the players town. Alls the player saw was the monster wander off then come back and destroy his town. So while sure the monster was attacking the Ai the player has no way to know this.. and only sees that no matter what he does monsters seem to attack him.
How many times do you think the average person is going to try to play through the game before they just move onto something else due to what they think is monsters picking on them and AI cheating? They aren't likely to learn anything about monster behavior through each play through due to the random nature.. so how would you suggest the average person is going to react to negative feedback regardless of actions? At that point the player may keep playing.. or post a thread complaining about it. But he's just as likely to shelf the game and move on to something else.
If they want to leave the initial player experience to be determined by dice rolls they are more than welcome to. They can leave it as is .. but you will continue to see these threads pop up over and over. Because like it or not you can't ignore player psychology when designing games, something which FE tries to do. Informing people one at a time that the AI has no preferences because its actions are based on random dice rolls isn't likely to be very successful in making the average player want to keep playing the game.
Although I suppose to be fair if they have gotten that far they must have already bought the game so who cares right?
The AI is playing a risky game, yes.
If you have a way of moving in pioneers when the monsters wipe an AI city, you can take over some of their lands while maintaining non-aggression pacts.
Also, some AIs seem to do a better job of clearing monsters than others.
Yes, that's the ticket. I don't know what random means.
There's a lot of random in this game. The initial player experience (assuming they play a random map) is entirely determined by dice rolls. It's a random map. Although I think it's not completely random which suggests, again, that maybe I just don't know what random means.
I think the game could do a lot more to tell the player about things that are happening in the FOW. Monster behavior could be more interesting. The tutorial and manual could do more to inform players about how to deal with monsters. But they are monsters.
And monsters should be dangerous. Not like "don't visit the tiles next to them until you have a level 10 champion and a couple strong units" but "ahh! crap! stupid f-ing monster! dammit dammit dammit!" dangerous. Which is pretty close to what they are now.
Ahhh, you make the mistake of assuming that video games were always like they are now. You are incorrect. What you term "player psychology" I think would be better described as "expectations born of years of playing scripted video games". The Nintendo-ization of games. It didn't always used to be like this. And many gamers harken for a game that isn't completely deterministic. That says, sometimes if you move your settler next to the monster, it wont attack... do you feel lucky?
If you get wrecked by a random monster stack and you say, "This game sucks," feel free to take your ball and go home. There are a lot of games in the sea and FE may not be the game for you.
I get wrecked by a random monster stack and I say, "Ahh! Crap! Stupid f-ing monster! Dammit dammit dammit!" Then I hit CTRL+N and start again. Because this time, I'll get my sov to level 20 and dominate the world, chortling with glee as I crush Mire Skaths and Crag Spawn beneath my boots.
I agree that monsters should have motivational behavior based on "feed or fear": Can I eat it/rob it/drain it's soul, or is it too strong? VVandering randomly is not a good system for representing intelligent and semi-intelligent monsters.
I agree that monsters shouldn't necessarily raze a city... Resources and outposts are OK to raze. I like the idea of cities losing population/improvements to monster attacks, and I think the amount of damage should scale vvith the monster's threat rating (I think certain monsters should get bonuses to city damage, like elementals vvho apparently hate people), +/- a small random amount. If population is reduced to zero, maybe turn it into a monster lair for the razing monster.
I agree destruction of other faction cities deserves a notice for the player.
Building a city near monsters is counter intuitive. Let's say Emperor Bob comes up to Peasant Bill and tells him to pack his things and move over there, near that dragon lair, cause Bob vvants that tasty gold in the hills nearby... If I vvas Peasant Bill, I'd smile and nod and pack my things and move in entirely the opposite direction until I vvas out of the country... Maybe one of those other sovereigns isn't insane and vvilling to risk my life...
So I agree vvith the sentiment that you clear the area of monsters, then move in. You're playing the role of a leader taming the vvilderness and bringing back civilization.
That being said, something I've never tried is building a city around a vvarden outpost. Is this feasible to protect a city from vvandering monsters? Can you send tvvo pioneers, build an outpost, then settle right next to the outpost? Hovv strong of monsters do the vvardens protect the city from?
Anybody knovv if monster behavior is hardcoded or moddable in XML?
I've got 2hrs worth of video showing that the AI is either extremely lucky, or the AI gets a pass by monsters in a lot of cases.
A shaman army (strong with many units) would leave it's location to chase my units as they passed by. On the other hand, an AI dropped an outpost right beside it and the shaman army never attacked it. The army eventually wandered into my outpost - 8ish tiles away.
I have clearly seen that dropping an outpost beside any monster is going to have that outpost removed within a few turns. But not when the AI does it.
What level difficulty were you playing on?
I think there's a game mechanic where experiencing losses makes the higher level monsters start losing interest in you. I just played a game where in the initial moves my sovereign and my champion both where defeated a number of times before I managed to break out of my starting cul-de-sac. And I have noticed that while the low level monsters still chase me like normal, I have been able to walk past higher level monsters without getting attacked.
Having played over 500 hours on this game now since beta, I can count on one hand the number of times I've actually seen the AI fight monsters or monsters attack thier settlements and outposts.
I've seen an equivalent sampling of monsters fighting each other if thier random movement passes into an 'Elemental Zone'.
I have seen literally hundreds of times that monsters attacked or pursued my scouts and escorted pioneers, while ignoring Procipinee's hundred pioneers right next to them. Hell, I triggered the Army of Spiders quest, and half of the miserable little blighters suicided against a unit that I had stationed to block a pass, and totally ignored the half dozen settlers in their midst. In my last game, an Obsidian Golem crossed 35 tiles, through and past enemy territory and unguarded villages to come and attack me.
It is certainly obvious that the AI DOES interact with the monsters, and arguably can be inhibited by them, but there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the monster AI is skewed or weighted differently to AI lords, either this, or there is a bug or sick, twisted mechanic that alters AI behaviours in FOW.
Attacks on outlying outposts and resources are totally random. If monster A happens to roll walk that way, it razes the resource/outpost. Totally random.
The whole point is that despite what obvious fanboys and an old post or two from the developer claiming differently, a great number of people cannot directly observe or perceive AI vs monster, but have plenty of knowledge of AI hatef**king them repeatedly.
Perception is everything in the end, but after 500 hours, I'm rather heavily of the belief that the AI is weighted well differently to human targets by the monster AI.
I'm suspecting the same thing... I recently played a game vvhere it looked like an AI faction didn't go after any monsters vvhatsoever... He had outposts and practically undefended cities everyvvhere I've been so far. I knovv he took some losses from monsters, he lost close to half his faction povver, but there vvere monsters everyvvhere in his lands. I seen a stack of 6 units of monsters, 5 units of spiders and a Hecatomb unit... all on the same tile, and not a lair. Yet he had unmolested outposts and resources and pioneers in the midst of all this. He must have taken some earlier losses to account for the loss of faction povver, but after that the monsters seemed to leave him alone...
Update for the guy belovv: Hard AI faction difficulty, Expert Game difficulty. I conquered city after city of his using my sov and his buddies, leaving them undefended (just as the AI did). After conquering seven cities, five vvere destroyed by vvandering monsters (by the time I conquered the seventh city).
I think the mechanic is vvrong here... The AI shouldn't get "monster immunity" for his cities after losses to monsters, it should prioritize military production and research and hunting dovvn monsters.
What level were you playing on? And how long did you watch your AI opponent?
I've played with an outpost that had a dragon regularly show up every few turns for more than 90 before it vanished for good, attacking Magnar. (And I wish him the best, as in not.) It got next to my outpost--which didn't have any buildings to ward off monsters--would wait around, then leave. And return.
Just played a game where the AI settled right near an ashwake dragon. The dragon ignored the AI city and attacked my city which wasn't anywhere near the dragon's lair.
I think Brad has already mentioned before that the monster AI tends to ignore the other AI players at higher difficulty levels. In other words, the bias is intentional.
Now whether this makes for a fun mechanic or not is not clear, especially when the AI players inadvertently take advantage of this bias by settling near monsters who then head straight for the human player after they've been woken up. It almost sounds a like 'cheese' strategy except for the fact that the AI doesn't do this on purpose I think.
I think the AI has problems reasoning about geometry - that kind of processing gets to be computationally expensive, and I think Stardock is worried about making end-of-turn take too long. (But maybe they could use time while waiting for the player to move to search for best visible options or something like that?)
Yes, but you won't find anybody above answering my repeated question, "What level difficulty were you playing at?" The point that the game is skewed in favor of AI opponents at higher levels, a standard condition in many strategy games, seems to have escaped them.
I wouldn't mind seeing a list of the exact ways the game skews at lower and higher levels, under the impression that the more information you provide like this to players, the less likely they are to jump to wrong conclusions. Without that, we'll see this zombie rise again, and again, and again.
If anything, maybe there's something wrong in the way it nerfs the monster AI that's causing the game to become harder at easier levels.
I see that quite a bit. I started a new game last night. My city ZOC expanded to inlcude the 3 skaths in a Skath den. Went straight to the town and leveled it. A few turns later my sovereign was half a map away in the lands of Yithril, Verga's ZOC changed and inlcuded a Forest Drake, about 8 or 10 turns later a forest drake destroyed another one of my cities. I had explored quite a bit of the map and I don't know 100% if it was the same Forest Drake, but I am pretty sure it was. If it was in fact the same Forest Drake, it wandered a really long way to destroy my town. It also walked past two Yithril cities on its way to my town. Needless to say, the loss of two towns in about 12 turns has drastically changed my position in the game. Yithril was already ahead of me, and with the loss of two cities, I am pretty sure he is going to declare war on me in the next couple turns. I am not sure I will be able to handle his juggernauts. The Skaths were my fault, I invaded their territory so I am completely fine with that attack. But the Forest Drake was just brutal.
What level were you playing on?
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
